Egerton Ryerson Young

“ But strange to say, while Astumastao’s eyes brightened when Oowikapun entered the wigwam, and her welcome was always kindly, yet she skillfully changed the conversation when it seemed to be leading toward the tender sentiment, and parried with seeming unconsciousness all reference to marriage. And being, as women are, more skillful and quick-witted than men, she, for some reason or other, would never let him see that she appeared to think of him as a suitor for her hand and heart, and by her tact, for some reason unaccountable to him, kept him from saying what was in his heart. ”

“ He said: “I am in body like the old wigwam that has been shaken by many a storm. Every additional blast that now assails it only makes the rents and crevices the more numerous and larger. But the larger the breaks and openings, the more the sunshine can enter in. So with me, every pang of suffering, every trial of patience, only opens the way into my soul for more of Jesus and his love.” ”

“ To suffer, but to show no sign, is the proverb of the true Indian. And yet Astumastao would not admit even to herself that she was deeply in love with Oowikapun. She had treasured the fond conceit in her heart that the one all-absorbing passion with her was that which she had freely revealed to him, and she in her simplicity had honestly believed that no other love could take its place, or even share the room in her heart. ”

“ He had gone out to visit some traps which he had set in a place where he had noticed the tracks of wild cats. While going along through a dense forest with his gun strapped on his back he got so lost in thought that his naturally shrewd instincts as a hunter, sharpened by practice, seemed to have deserted him, and he nearly stumbled over a huge, old she bear and a couple of young cubs. With a growl of rage at being thus disturbed the fierce brute rushed at him, and quickly broke up his reverie and brought him back to a sense of present danger. ”

“ She was a brave woman and knew what to do. Holding the knife firmly in her hand, she waited until his hot breath was in her face and he was trying to crowd his paws in between her back and the tree against which she was pressing herself with all her might, then with all her force she plunged the sharp pointed knife into his body in the region of his heart and gave it a quick, sharp turn. So thoroughly and well did she do her work that the great, fierce brute could only throw up his paws and fall over dead. ”

“ Touched by the kindly manner of the stranger, Oowikapun forgot his usual reserve, and told him all that was in his heart. While he talked the visitor listened in silence until he had told his sad story, and then heaving a sigh, that seemed full of sorrow, he said to Oowikapun: “Has not the Great Spirit pitied you and tried to help you? Did he not send you to the wigwam of one of his followers to give you some directions about getting in the better way? Is he not waiting and watching to see how you are using what knowledge you have secured? ”

“ For a long time Oowikapun hesitated to undertake this terrible ordeal, called by the Western Indians the hock-e-a-yum, a ceremony so severe and dreadful that many an Indian has never recovered from its agonies. Great indeed must be the wretched disquietude that will cause human beings, who are made to shrink from pain, endure what thousands voluntarily submit to, if only they can get peace to their souls. ”

“ Schooled in a life of hardship, the women as well as the men can put on the mask of apparent indifference, while at the same time the heart is racked by intensest feeling, or the body is suffering most horrid torture. Death in its most dreadful form may be staring them in the face, and yet the outsider may look in vain for the blanching of the cheek, or the quivering of a muscle. Very early in life does this stern education begin.
“That is my best child,” said an Indian father, as he pointed out an apparently happy little girl seven or eight years old, in his wigwam. ”

“ It will be no child’s play, for a wounded, maddened bear is a fierce foe. The black bear’s method of trying to kill his human antagonist is quite different from that of the grizzly bear of the Rocky Mountains. The grizzly strikes out with his dreadful claws with such force that he can tear a man to pieces and is able to crush down a horse under his powerful blows, but the black bear tries to get the hunter in his long, strong, armlike fore legs, and then crush him to death. The hug of a bear, as some hunters know to their cost, is a warm, close embrace. ”

“ Untaught in the schools and free from all the guiles of heartless coquetry, an orphan girl in an Indian village, with neither prudery on the one hand, nor hothouse teachings on the other, which turn the heads of so many girls, Astumastao was to herself a riddle which she could not solve—a problem the most difficult of any she had tried to understand. ”

“ It came to Oowikapun one night when he had aimlessly wandered far out from the shadows of the forest gloom, to a spot where the canopy of heaven, bright with its multitudes of stars, was above him.
Perhaps in no other land can nature in her varied aspects of sublimity and grandeur as regards celestial phenomena, be better studied than in the wild north-land. Her cyclonic storms in summer and her blizzard blasts in winter are at times not only terrific in their destructive power, but they are also overwhelmingly grand in their appearance. ”

“ This I did, and then I drew up my sled beyond their reach. Not very long after I had succeeded in this, I saw a great moose deer plunging through the snow, followed by fierce grey wolves. He made the most desperate efforts to escape; but, as they did not sink deeply in the snow, while he broke through at every plunge, they were too much for him, and although he badly injured some of them, yet they succeeded in pulling him down and devoured him. It was dreadful to see the way they snarled and fought with each other over the great body. ”

“ To Oowikapun, in his mental darkness and disquietude, there came one of these more than earthly visions of entrancing beauty. If in any one of nature’s phenomena she could speak to a troubled soul, surely it would be in this. For while to Elijah the answer was in the still small voice, yet man unaided by divine revelation prefers the earthquake and the fire, or some other grand, overwhelming manifestation of nature’s power, which appeals to the sensuous rather than to the spiritual. ”

“ Then her “visions of the night” are at times sublimely beautiful. Her star-decked vault of heaven, absolutely free from all mists and fogs and damps, seems so high and vast. The stars glisten and twinkle with wondrous clearness. The flashing meteors fade out but slowly, and the moon is so white and bright that her shadows cast are often as vivid as those of the sun in some other lands. ”

“ Such a woman could give no advice that would be of much service to such an alert, thoughtful girl as Astumastao, and so, unaided and undisciplined, she let her thoughts drift and her heart become the seat of emotions and feelings most diverse. Sometimes she bitterly upbraided herself for her coldness and indifference to Oowikapun as she thought of his many noble qualities. ”

“ Oowikapun listened to this story of the old man, whose name was Mookoomis, Indianlike, with patience, until he closed; and then in strong language expressed his horror and indignation. It was most unfortunate that he should have heard it in the state of mind that he was in at that time. From his meeting with Memotas and Astumastao he had inferred that all white men were good people, but here was a rude awakening from that illusion. Terrible indeed have been the evils wrought by the white men in these regions where dwell the red men, as well as in other lands. ”

“ A year after my Uncle Kistayimoowin came down to the fort with his furs, and took me away home with him; and here, so far away, I have lived ever since. In his way he is not unkind to me, but my Uncle Koosapatum hates me because I know these things; and as all are in dread of his poisons, even Kistayimoowin does not wish me to speak about what I heard that year, or sing what I remember except when I am far out in the forest. Because I do not want to have my uncle, the chief, poisoned, I kept quiet sometimes; but most of the women have heard all I know, and they are longing to hear more. ”

“ Poor Oowikapun was now in this sad company. All his fears are aroused, and in his vain efforts to quiet them he is about to go through a most severe ordeal of fasting and acute physical suffering. How terrible is sin! How dreadful must be the goadings of the guilty conscience when men and women will so punish themselves, if thereby they can find relief!
When Oowikapun had finally resolved on his course of action he immediately set about carrying it out. He joined himself to a company of “braves” who were also going to pass through the ceremony of hock-e-a-yum. ”

“ A great owl ensconced in a tree not far away began and maintained for a long time its monotonous “hoot-a-hoot a-hoo,” while away in the distant forest gloom, rising at times shrill and distinct above the fitful wind, he heard the wail of the catamount or panther, the saddest and most mournful sound that ever broke the solitude of forest gloom. ”

“ To these Northern Indians the auroras have ever been associated with the ghostly or spiritual. In some of the tribes the literal translation of the northern lights is the “spirits of their forefathers going out to battle.”
The display that Oowikapun gazed upon was one of more than ordinary sublimity. He had left his little wigwam which nestled among the balsams, and had gone out from the forest gloom and had seated himself on the shore of the lake where the little waves made soothing music as they played among the pebbles at his feet. ”

“ Bravely did she apply herself to the task; and such was her skill and industry that a good degree of success crowned her efforts, and very seldom indeed was it that their wigwam was destitute of food. Often had she some to spare for the old and feeble ones who, according to the heartless custom of some of the tribes, when they reach the time of life when they can neither snare rabbits nor catch fish, are either thrown out of the wigwams in the bitter cold, and left to freeze to death, or they are deserted in the forests, and left to be devoured by the wild beasts. ”

“ His stoical Indian nature would have caused him to withstand the pain with indifference, but when he remembered how the wolf, maddened by his capture, had wrought himself up into such a frenzy that his mouth was all foaming with madness when he made that last desperate spring and succeeded in fastening his fangs in his arm, he feared that perhaps some of the froth might have got into his arm, and unless some remedies were quickly obtained, madness might come to him, to be followed by a most dreadful death. ”

“ The dauntless courage that had made him exult at the prospect of meeting the fiercest bear in the forest, with no other weapon than his trusty hunting knife, or the most hostile foe of his tribe, was of no avail here, and so, a crushed and vanquished man, as soon as he could, he cowered back to his wigwam, where, wrapping himself in his blanket, he long remained. ”

“ It was a lie of the conjurers, if they said anything of the kind.”
A feeling of admiration, followed by one of almost envy, came over him as he listened to the decided words, uttered with such spirit, and he heartily wished some of it had been his when tempted to join in the dance of sin. With the consciousness of weakness and with his proud spirit quelled, he said: “Why are you of this mind? How is it that you know so much about the white man’s way? Did I not see you in the wigwam of Kistayimoowin, the chief, whose brother is the great medicine man of the tribe? ”

“ His coming, however, and his reference to Memotas had strangely broken the quiet monotony of years. Then what she had done for him in the wigwam, their conversation in the trail, and above all, his gallant rescue of her from the terrible catamount, had aroused new emotions within her and opened up her mind to a wider vision, until now she saw that she was no longer the young free Indian girl with no thoughts but those of her childhood, but a woman who must now act and decide for herself. ”

“ One day, while Oowikapun was pondering over the words of Astumastao, and thinking of the risks she and her companions were about to run, and the dangers they would have to encounter in their great undertaking, and contrasting it with the listless, aimless life he had lately been leading, suddenly there came to him, as a revelation, a noble resolve which took such possession of him and so inspired him that he appeared and acted like another man. ”

“ Oowikapun dropped to the ground and carefully looked for the tracks of the game that this fierce catamount was pursuing, but to his surprise he could not discover the footprints of any animal. All at once the truth flashed upon him, that this fierce brute had got on the trail of the woman, and, maddened it may be by hunger, was resolved to attack her. ”

“ One evening, when a few interested listeners were gathered around the wigwam fire of the old story-teller, whom they had made happy by gifts of venison and tobacco, Oowikapun said to him, “Good father, you are wise in many things about which we are ignorant, and long ago the old men of our people handed down to you from our forefathers the stories to be kept in remembrance; tell us how the white men come to be here, and if you know, we should like to hear also of the black people of whom the runners from other tribes have told us, who also exist in great numbers.” ”

“ Nature alone and unaided does not reveal Christ the Saviour. Since the fall, and the entrance of sin with all of its attendant miseries into this once glorious world of ours, the study of nature, with all her vagaries, without the light of revelation to clear up her mysteries, is more apt to drive men from God than to draw them to him.
So Oowikapun found out, especially one night, after tossing about on his bed of balsam boughs in his little tent. ”

“ Success in the goose hunt seems to elate the Indian more than in anything else. Why, I could never find out. It may be because it is the first spring hunting after the long, dreary winter, and there is the natural gladness that the pleasant springtime has come again. Whatever it may be, I noticed for years more noisy mirth and earnest congratulations on success in the goose hunt than in anything else. ”

“ Gladly accepting her invitation, he repeated his visits to her wigwam as often as Indian etiquette would sanction.
One day, when only the three were present, Oowikapun, who had heard from some of the people of the heroic way in which Astumastao had rescued her Uncle Kistayimoowin from a watery grave, asked her to tell him the story.
As a general thing among the Indians, but little reference is made to the dead. The whole thing to them, without any light to illumine the valley of the shadow of death, is so dreadful that they do not mention the word death. ”